Thanks, Q, for putting me on to a good thread. So, do we think that Montana Slim wrote the melody, or that he (or someone else) adapted a traditional fiddle tune?

I'm particularly interested in how that tune came to be used by Australian country singer Tex Morton for his version of 'The Wild Rover' in 1941. Would he have been more likely, I wonder, to have heard the tune from the 1933 'Strawberry Roan' movie, or from a Montana Slim recording I have little idea of how far these things spread)? Does anyone have access to Slim's alternative version 'The Booze Hound's Lament', mentioned further up this thread?